2016 U.S. J U NIOR MEN’ S C HAMPION
by NICK MCCARVEL On the day of his 16th birthday, Tomoki Hi-
watashi gave himself the best possible present: He won the U.S. junior title, landing a triple Axel in competition for the first time in his free skate. Only Hiwatashi has dreams of future birth-
days, ones where a medal being draped over his neck will once again trump any piece of cake. “If I’m able to do well in the senior level and
perhaps win a medal, I would like to make that my best birthday present for myself,” he said in Saint Paul, Minnesota (home of the 2016 U.S. Figure Skating Championships), in an interview with Te Skating Lesson. For the soft-spoken kid from the Chicago
area, grand ambitions aren’t boastfully stated of- ten. But following his gold in January, the teen- ager went on to capture the bronze medal at the World Junior Championships in Debrecen, Hun- gary, in March. In the past few months his skating has been
doing the talking — and its message is being heard loud and clear. “He has made big improvements,” Hi-
watashi’s coach Alexander Ouriashev said. “Now he has a triple Axel, a quad toe and we’re working on the quad Salchow. He has really improved as a skater, not just his jumps. His style has improved, too.”
After placing second at the Midwestern Sec-
tionals in November, Hiwatashi turned his atten- tion to that tricky triple Axel, which he says some days he can hit with ease and others he struggles to find his form.
“After sectionals I knew that I had to get the
triple Axel,” he told SKATING magazine. “I’ve been working on it since the beginning of last year and it’s more consistent now. I spent those two months working really hard on it.” As Hiwatashi makes the transition from the
junior ranks to senior, his focus will turn from that triple Axel to the two quads he continues to devel- op: the quad toe and the quad Salchow. He has yet to try one in competition, but looks to young skaters like Nathan Chen (one of the skaters he said he tries to emulate) as motivators to develop a high-octane game. Might Hiwatashi be one of the skaters to
break through in a time of uncertainty for U.S. men internationally? “Of course. Why not? We’re working for
that,” Ouriashev said. “I can’t say it 100 percent because no one knows what is going to happen. Tomoki might quit, might fall in love or lose in- terest in skating all together. Who knows! But it’s in my mind and in his mind. By elements, he is a world-level skater, though he’s not a senior-level skater yet. It takes time. You need to mature.” Hiwatashi maintains quite a mature sched-
ule already, however. He wakes each day between 5 and 6 a.m. and eats breakfast over his studies, part of his homeschooling program. By 9 a.m. he is off to the rink, where he skates for three to four hours under the watchful eye of Ouriashev. Two days a week ballet class follows the ice; the other three days he does off-ice strength training, then more schoolwork before bed.
Hiwatashi’s Charlie Chaplin inspired free skate clinched the top spot on the junior men’s podium, marked a personal-best U.S. qualifying segment score and was the first triple Axel the Illinois-based skater landed in a competition — and all on his 16th birthday.
The title is Hiwatashi’s fourth, having previously won at the juvenile (2011), intermediate (2012) and novice (2013) levels.
“He is a very focused guy, a hard worker,”
Ouriashev said. Hiwatashi said he was pleasantly surprised by
his bronze medal in Hungary, saying the aim there was to maintain three spots for the U.S. team in 2017. Now eyes are affixed on the 2016–17 sea- son and seniors. His expectations are — no shock — tame
ones. “I just tell myself if I’m doing what I’m do-
ing right now, and I’m able to get better, I might be able to be a top senior skater,” Hiwatashi said. “Tere’s a lot of good skaters in America; it’s hard to get on the podium. I’m guessing it’s not likely [in 2017], but I’m aiming for fifth through eighth. If I can get there, I’ll be happy.” Ouriashev, brasher, discusses the Olympics
and 2018 openly. Hiwatashi says it’s still far off, but that he will try for the Pyeongchang team in less than two years. He’s a skater who, his coach says, finds his peak when the music begins playing. “In practice he might pop a jump or fall on
a quad, but when I turn on the music, he does his best,” Ouriashev said. “He can focus in the mo- ment when he really needs to. I’m realistic. I don’t expect this coming season to be very successful, because it’s going to be his first senior level. But if he comes out with great programs, clean, who knows. Realistically he’s ready to compete at the senior level.” Hiwatashi said it’s a love of doing what few
others can that keeps him out on the ice on a dai- ly basis, spinning, jumping and working toward more hardware — the best sort of birthday pres- ents.
“I love the feeling in the air of jumping and
doing rotations,” he said. “It feels great doing tri- ples and quads. It just feels good to be able to do things that other people can’t do. Te skating for me is just the fun part.” And a few senior medals would be fun, too.
SKATING 45
JAY ADEFF/U.S. FIGURE SKATING
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